I watched a conference on C-Span held in Seattle where Gloria Steinem spoke and during the Q&A she recommended a book to read that had to do with "land" being the case of racism.

Can you help me with the title and or author of that book?

Here's your answer: Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist, The New Press, published in the 1990s. A small, powerful, well-written book showing that racism was invented to justify the taking over of land, and that became such a mainstream, "scientifically" proven construct that it justified genocide.